[music playing]
My cousin, Lisa, hosted a dinner party
for her mother's boyfriend.
And she had several people attend that dinner.
MARGIE YAHYAVI: My aunt Helen stayed after the party,
helping clean up a little bit.
And then Helen went home and then didn't
hear from Lisa the next day or the next day
and was calling Lisa.
And Lisa wasn't returning her calls, which is very unusual.
ARTHUR REES: And then it went on to Monday.
And Helen still hadn't heard from her.
And then she started becoming a little bit concerned.
Then Helen received a phone call from Lisa's work.
And they indicated that Lisa hadn't been
in work for a couple of days.
Aunt Helen became alarmed because that was completely
out of character for Lisa.
So Aunt Helen drove over to Diamond Heights.
And when Aunt Helen arrived at Lisa's condo,
there was police tape surrounding the building.
NARRATOR: Neighbors had reported a foul odor
coming from Lisa Valdez's unit.
PAM HOFFSASS: The manager noticed
that the door was unlocked.
He opened up the door and saw a body on the floor,
basically right in front of where the door opens.
And he quickly closed the door and called 911.
NARRATOR: The manager had stumbled into a murder scene.
RONAN SHOULDICE: Lisa's body was on the floor
at the foot of the bed.
She was in a pretty advanced state of decomposition.
There was such a significant amount of blood.
It was plainly obvious that a violent struggle
had taken place, that she had met a very violent death.
The neighbor reported that at about 1:30
early Sunday morning, they heard a loud thumping
sound above, which would have been Lisa's apartment.
RONAN SHOULDICE: We knew that her mother
had left around midnight.
But the lack of forced entry into her apartment
indicated that she had to have opened the door.
There was no other explanation.
We could tell that there was no robbery or burglary involved
since her purse and her belongings, money and jewelry
and whatnot were not taken.
NARRATOR: But on closer investigation,
detectives make an odd discovery.
Part of Lisa's hair has been cut off.
RONAN SHOULDICE: A fixation that her killer must have had
with her, taking a souvenir.
MAISSA ROBINSON: The people were terrified because it
is a gated community.
Someone can't just walk through the neighborhood and gain
access to your dwelling.
It was impossible.
NARRATOR: Detectives believe that Lisa
was murdered in the early hours of Sunday, May 17.
PAM HOFFSASS: And then on Monday,
May 18 at 10:00 AM, the housekeeper opened up the door
and saw a body on the floor naked,
heard the voice of a guy.
And she thought she was interrupting an intimate moment
with Lisa and another person.
So she leaves.
And then nobody finds Lisa until Wednesday.
The toilet seat in Lisa's bathroom
became a focus of my attention because it was left raised.
It was inconsistent with a woman living alone.
NARRATOR: Inspector Shouldice dusts
the seat for fingerprints.
All of Lisa's friends and family provided prints.
And that allowed me then to compare them to the prints
off the toilet seat.
NARRATOR: The fingerprints on the seat
belonged to someone other than Lisa and her guests.
Investigators believe they could belong to the killer.
When the blood droplets on one of Lisa's pillows
was examined by the crime lab, they
were able to determine first that it was not Lisa's blood
and that it was of an unknown male profile.
My mom was the last to see her alive.
She told me that Lisa had a date the next afternoon.
PAM HOFFSASS: We found out that Lisa was dating
a person named Albert Cato.
And she was going to have a date with him on Sunday,
May 17, 1998.
But he canceled the date and said he was out 'till 3 o'clock
in the morning with friends.
NARRATOR: Police bring Albert Cato in for an interview.
As soon as he arrives, they notice
a jagged cut on his hand.
In a violent crime, we know that when
someone is being stabbed repeatedly,
that very often the person who's doing the stabbing
cuts themselves in the act.
And so the fact that he had a cut on his hand
heightened the suspicion that he may have
been involved in this crime.
NARRATOR: But on June 5, they run tests on Cato's
fingerprints and on his DNA.
Neither match his samples found on the scene.
Cato can't be the killer.
PAM HOFFSASS: Lisa received a couple of calls
from unknown callers at the wee hours of Sunday morning.
But there are a couple of strange messages
left by the 19th caller.
[beeping]
NARRATOR: The 19th caller wants to know if Lisa
is home on that fateful night.
PAM HOFFSASS: The weird voice messages
were identified as coming from Albert Robinson, who turned out
to be a friend of Lisa's, coworker,
and known her for a few years.
NARRATOR: A few days later, Lisa's family
holds a memorial service in the chapel of her alma mater,
Mills College.
Also in attendance none other than Albert Robinson,
the man behind the odd-sounding voicemails.
PAM HOFFSASS: Albert Robinson presented
a letter to the attendees that was very bizarre.
He talked about his love for Lisa,
that they were going to get married
and they were going to raise a family.
A very, very completely different
take on their relationship than what Lisa shared
with her friends and family.
MAISSA ROBINSON: Lisa was absolutely not dating Albert.
Albert was a person that had always struck me as odd.
PAM HOFFSASS: When a search warrant was served at his home,
detectives found photos of Lisa all over his house.
NARRATOR: But once again, the DNA and fingerprints
failed to match, eliminating Robinson
and dealing another major blow to the investigation.
PAM HOFFSASS: No information was coming
in as to who or why anybody would want to kill Lisa.
And they definitely hit a dead end.
NARRATOR: 10 years after Lisa Valdez's murder,
her case remains shelved.
But Inspector Shouldice always kept
it in the back of his mind.
PAM HOFFSASS: And then on September 2, 2011,
I got a phone call from the state, the DNA laboratory,
the CODIS laboratory.
Here's the good news--
you got the hit.
It's all the markers.
Every single peak is matching.
NARRATOR: After 10 long years sitting on ice,
the case finally heats up.
PAM HOFFSASS: The DNA was in the database for all these years.
And it finally matched to a person
named Anthony Quinn Hughes.
Ronan called me at 9 o'clock at night.
And he said, "Anthony Quinn Hughes's right middle finger
was on that toilet seat."
That was just icing on the cake, because now it's
two pieces of key evidence.
NARRATOR: Detectives review Lisa's answering machine
and find that Hughes had left a message after the murder.
It was nondescript and not--
nothing really unusual about it, except for the fact
that he made it after she was already dead on May 18.
NARRATOR: Did detectives make a crucial error by overlooking
the message from Hughes?
In my view, the detectives at the time
blew it by not going far enough through Lisa's information
on her answering machine.
They only went up to 19 people and researched them.
NARRATOR: And Hughes was the 22nd caller.
Investigators also find what appears
to be an old contact for Hughes in Lisa's address book.
PAM HOFFSASS: They contacted me in the middle of the night
and I asked them to bring Hughes to Homicide.
When we showed him a picture of Lisa Valdez and asked him,
do you recognize this person, Anthony Quinn Hughes said no.
And then I asked him, so you don't know Lisa Valdez?
And then he did a double take, shook his head,
and he said, oh yeah, we dated in high school.
And then we hit him with the evidence
and particulars of the case.
And I thought that he was about to write out a confession.
He asked for a pen and a pad.
He was bent over and he's ready to write.
And instead of writing, he started--
he took the pen to his neck and his stomach in front of us
and just went into a little tizzy.
What was going through my head was why would
he do this if he wasn't guilty?
If he did, in fact, not have anything to do with her murder,
how is it possible that he would be taking his life now,
he wants to die now?
It was about 11 o'clock on Saturday morning
when I told my partner, Kevin, we still
got to find Lisa's mom, Helen Valdez,
and we got to tell her in person.
After all those years of not knowing,
it was very, very emotional.
And I get emotional thinking about it, just remembering
how much it meant to her.
NARRATOR: For some reason, Anthony
Quinn Hughes decided to murder his old friend Lisa Valdez.
Exactly why remains a mystery.
During the early arraignments, Hughes
walked in confident, haughty, arrogant, with attitude, right?
And then during the trial, he was a very meek demeanor,
hunched over with a Bible in his hand
and wearing a cross around his neck.
So that's all-- it's all an act.
NARRATOR: The jury finds Anthony Quinn
Hughes guilty of second degree murder of Lisa Valdez.